The founders of Rock they knew this. They used to visit Muddy Waters modest home or better term is shack maybe, with limousines to learn more and understand more on music and people who created it. It was their Mecca. Especially Rolling Stones were frequent visitors.

Many years Rock music played and danced by blacks nobody paid attention. But when sexy Elvis from south of USA, played the Rock with tunes highly effected by blues with provoking hip movements and style he borrowed from blacks everything has changed. It was history we all remember.

Blues seems and sounds like a sad music; definitely not. It is the black’s dynamic, genius mind that created it to make fun with their problems and shabby conditions created by racism.

I am working on this project for more than ten years.I am planning to end this year. I would like to add Africa and other countries but I don’t have enough time and funding for this. I have more than hundred fifty photos I think it is enough for this project.

After fifty years of Rosa Parks Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington organized by Dr. M. L. King Jr. the social and economic conditions of blacks and segregation hasn’t changed much.Inner city blacks suffered unemployment, incompetent schools, gang and drug infested neighborhoods, racism and prejudice. Which limited black children’s ability for education and improvement of their lives. Black adults are always at the economic edge, as they say they were the, Last hired and first fired.

This poor ethnic minority created the best of the American music, maybe the only American music form Jazz, Blues, Soul, and Gospel. These music styles affected all western music forms including Classic music of Gershwin and the Rock Music, as we know today. Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly influenced The Beatles and Rolling Stones. Dynamic, electric, Chicago Blues was the main force for English rock bands, they were visiting the humble house of Muddy Waters with limousines they couldn't find an enough space to sit down so they went to his bar to talk and play.

ISTANBUL RUMI GATHERINGS AND MEVLEVI MUSIC

Sema dance and Sufi rituals.

Whirling dance is long with many detailed processions, basically very simple musical instruments plays Sufi Music, dancers one hand is facing sky respect and prayer to God the other hand is facing ground connecting spiritual world to Earth and life.Music. Cafe Anatolia and Local Mevlevi Musicians

Mevlana is a cultural figure of world stature who gave not only Turkey and the other Moslem countries but people everywhere the transcendent values of ‘the hearts purity’, the images of the Perfect Man, the deathlessness of the loving soul, joys of passion, humanitarian enlightenment, the artistic dimensions of faith, and the poetic euphoria of the belief in God’s beauty and in the human being as a reflection of that reality.He sought to create a ‘ climate of love ‘ when sectarian conflict was rampant and religious wars ablaze. Few faiths in history have shared Mevlana’s total commitment to peace or his insistence on blending ethics with aesthetics.

Talat Sait Halman

BERLIN WALL

Berlin Wall around 1978 looks like a surreal image. The socialist state was crumbling at the other side. Capitalist city at this side was decadent, consumerism oriented and women of life looking for customer on the streets. Just like the progressive paintings of 1929

The street names like Spandau reminds horrific memories Rudolf Hess imprisoned there and train stations which carried prisoners to concentration camps of Nazis.The war torn city looked shaby but there were very lively and experimental art scene in the western part of the city.

The irony was, the democratic! Side of the city there was an old Jewish neighborhood called Kreuzbach, now there are many legally invited Turkish immigrant workers families live there. But there was swastikas and `Turkische Raus’ "Turks out" slogans on the wall. These immigrant workers of Turkey replaced the man power of Germany lost in WWII. Invitation came from German government. But it was very difficult for them to bring their families. As if they only wanted the working man.

It is very sad there were many attacks and assaults to these workers and some of their homes were burned, adults and children killed.

It seems we have to be vigilant against racist ideas and beliefs all around the world. That is the only way to make this world livable.